During a recent Vanity Fair video, Anthony and Joe Russo who helmed both Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame, revealed that Iron Man director Jon Favreau (who also plays Happy Hogan in the MCU) was originally opposed to the decision of killing off Tony Stark in the film.
Joe said, “I dunno if we’ve told this story in its entirety. It’s probably the most pressure we’ve ever had in, in trying to come up with a line with [Christopher] Markus, [Stephen] McFeely in any of these movies. You do not want to fuck up Tony Stark’s last line.”
“Part of the pressure came from Jon Favreau, who called us up after he read the script and said to us, ‘Are you really going to kill Iron Man?,” Anthony added. “He did. Yeah. And I remember pacing on the corner of a stage on the phone with Favreau trying to talk him off a ledge. ‘Cause he’s like, ‘You can’t do this. It’s gonna devastate people and you don’t want them you know, walking out of the theater and into traffic.’ We did it anyways.”
Anthony also noted that despite Favreau’s opposition, he didn’t get in the way of stepping into their process, “Yeah, we did it anyway. And, and to Jon’s credit, he hadn’t stepped through the process in the way that we had. So we would’ve had the same reaction if somebody had dropped that.”
It is understandable why Favreau initially opposed Tony’s death in Avengers: Endgame since he is the person behind his introduction at the beginning of the MCU and it looks like he is also concerned about the audience’s reaction to his death.
At the end of the day, Tony’s death paid off and they set up a great arc leading up to that moment. Looking back at the film, his death made a lot of audiences emotional and, at the same time, they were also able to accept that his days in the MCU are over. Who knows, now that we’re dealing with the multiverse, maybe he will return.
Also Read: Avengers: The Kang Dynasty Found Its Director With Shang-Chi Filmmaker
Avengers: Endgame is available to stream on Disney+.
